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FILM; When the Character Calls, Minnie Driver Listens

MINNIE DRIVER is equally at home telling an off-color joke or spelling Aeschylus correctly on a crossword puzzle, as she did recently in a rare moment of repose at a midtown Manhattan hotel. The 27-year-old British actress, who has made a career for herself in the United States in hit movies like ''Big Night,'' ''Grosse Pointe Blank'' and ''Good Will Hunting,'' displays a dizzying array of attributes: she's intellectual and earthy, statuesque and spirited. Perched on a chair with her legs tucked under her, she looks very much the rising star, with high-heeled lizard-print sandals on her feet and with her unruly ringlets pinned up in a smooth twist. But her frank personality penetrates any pose, whether it be through her irrepressible laugh, which invites complicity, or her sudden seriousness when she talks about the professional and personal tumult of the last few months.

Ms. Driver's new film, ''The Governess,'' opened on Friday, but she is still best known these days as Skylar, the Harvard undergraduate from Britain who falls in love with the unlikely math genius played by Matt Damon in ''Good Will Hunting.'' That performance gained her a nomination for the best-supporting-actress Oscar this year.

Since her Academy Award nomination, Ms. Driver's profile has grown beyond that of simply a supporting actress -- partly because of the roles coming her way, partly because her off-screen relationship with Mr. Damon, and its breakup, made her a popular subject among gossip columnists. ''Minnie has the potential to be both a character actress and a leading lady,'' said Barry Levinson, who directed her in the 1996 film ''Sleepers.'' ''She is very attractive, but she is also very chameleonlike.''

In any case, Ms. Driver certainly has a knack for choosing roles in films that will be successful. How does she pick them? ''I know my emotional repertory well,'' she replied in her gravelly voice, ''and when I read something that has a resonance in that part of me, I listen. I've never felt that I had to take a role in one of those mediocre but hugely budgeted romantic comedies because I want to wear beautiful dresses and have people think I'm pretty and that I get the guy. I really believe in the characters I play.''

''The Governess'' is a departure for Ms. Driver in that it is a period drama, a British film (her first in several years) and, most important, her largest role since 1995, when she made her feature-film debut in ''Circle of Friends.'' In the new movie, she plays Rosina Da Silva, a young Jewish woman in 1840 in London whose businessman father is suddenly murdered. Needing to find a way to support her mother and sister, Rosina hits on the idea of becoming a governess -- though to find work she must hide the fact that she is Jewish. Hired by a wealthy family in Scotland, she falls into a passionate affair with the man of the house, Charles Cavendish (Tom Wilkinson), who is a pioneering photographer.

Ms. Driver was attracted to the movie, which was filmed last summer in England and Scotland, because she felt it avoided the cliches of British costume drama. ''I wanted to do a period drama, but I didn't want it to be chocolate-boxy,'' she said. ''And sure enough, along came this twisted tale of spiritual subterfuge and blind eroticism.''

PREPARING for ''The Governess,'' Ms. Driver immersed herself in Judaism, attending synagogue and listening to Sephardic music, and became more familiar with photography, which becomes both Rosina's career and her emotional lifeline. Beyond the specifics of the character's coping with the constraints of 19th-century British society, Ms. Driver believes there's a timelessness to Rosina's inner conflicts. ''I'm fascinated by how much we, as women, have to subjugate and hide ourselves in order to get on in the world,'' she said.

Ms. Driver, who is in every scene of the film, shows a sort of kaleidoscopic subtlety in expressing Rosina's tangled emotions. This doesn't surprise the director, Sandra Goldbacher, whose background is in documentary and short films and who is making her feature-film debut with ''The Governess.''

''Minnie is able to be vulnerable at the same time as being strong,'' said Ms. Goldbacher. ''It's a very demanding role because it's almost like she plays five separate people. Rosina has assumed a different identity, but within that she behaves differently with each of the household members.''

Ms. Driver's versatility as an actress has made her uncategorizable in a broader sense. Although she is part of a new wave of British acting talent, which includes Rufus Sewell, Kate Beckinsale and Rachel Weisz, Ms. Driver has up to this point chosen to make her career mainly in the United States, where she has found the most opportunities. ''I think I'm viewed as being a bit of a traitor in Britain,'' she said.

In fact, many people mistakenly think of her as American, because of her ability to master almost any accent.

She is frank, however, about the dearth of worthwhile leading roles for young female stars in Hollywood. ''It's wonderful, with 'The Governess,' that it hasn't been about a studio saying, 'O.K., honey, it's your turn now,' '' she said. ''To strike out and go: 'You know what, I can do this. I feel strong enough and well-versed enough to take this woman on.' ''

Ms. Driver has recently bought a house in Hollywood and formed a production company, appropriately named Two Drivers, with her sister, Kate. ''The British tabloid press have Hollywood painted as a place where they hand you some silicone implants as you go through passport control,'' she said. ''But my life there is so much more low-key than that.''

Still, she doesn't intend to be bound or defined by life in the United States. ''I've always been pretty nomadic,'' she said.

This nomadic tendency is probably linked to Ms. Driver's colorful upbringing. She has been called Minnie since she was a baby, because Kate, who's just a bit older, couldn't pronounce Amelia. They spent their early childhood in Barbados. Their father, Ronnie Driver, is a financier; their mother, Gaynor Churchward, is a former couture model who now runs a home furnishings and textile design company in England.

As a child, ''Minnie was an entertainer,'' said Kate Driver. ''We'd perform little commercials every day of our own devising.''

When Minnie was 7, their parents divorced and the two girls went with their mother to live in England, though they often returned to Barbados to be with their father. At the age of 10, Minnie became a boarding student at Bedales, the renowned school in Hampshire, England, where she began to act in plays.

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After Bedales, she went to the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London, from which she graduated in 1990. In the next few years she appeared in a number of television series and BBC films, and she won the lead part in ''Circle of Friends,'' in which Pat O'Connor directed her as a plain, overweight Irish girl who captivates the local heartthrob (Chris O'Donnell).

RESTORED to her usual svelte self, Ms. Driver became frustrated with the opportunities she was finding in Britain. In 1995, a visit to New York became an extended stay when she was cast in Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott's ''Big Night,'' as the long-suffering fiancee of Mr. Tucci's character. Things started to percolate when ''Circle of Friends'' opened in the United States and was a critical hit as well as grossing more than $23 million.

On a lunch-hour break from filming ''Big Night,'' Ms. Driver auditioned for ''Sleepers,'' a film about former reform-school boys featuring Brad Pitt and Jason Patric -- and she got the part of the only notable female character, the girl who loves them both. Thanks to her quickness and sense of humor, Ms. Driver proved herself equal to the task of playing, as Mr. Levinson puts it, ''the girl who can hang with the guys and still hold her own center.''

Her humor has come in handy in an assortment of other roles -- including the part of Debi, the high-school girlfriend of the hit man played by John Cusack, in ''Grosse Pointe Blank'' (1997). ''During casting, we were writing down the dialogue she was coming up with and putting it right into the script,'' recalled George Armitage, the director of that film.

Ms. Driver always has a lot to do with making the women she plays more complex than they appear on paper. In her hands, Skylar, the affluent Harvard undergraduate in ''Good Will Hunting,'' whom she describes as ''definitely a bit of a device at first,'' became a ribald and achingly appealing character.

With the great success of ''Good Will Hunting'' -- it has grossed more than $138 million in the United States since its release last December -- Ms. Driver doesn't have to worry about what she calls ''supporting-role limbo.'' But she was also propelled into an unwelcome spotlight because of her romance with Mr. Damon. She no longer wishes to speak specifically about that aspect of her personal life, but she will talk generally about the experience of being a newly hatched star who is suddenly thrust into the midst of a news media hurricane.

''The press took a spin, chose an angle in the best tradition of 'Dynasty' and Dallas,' '' she said. ''The strangest fruit of fame is that people can twist your honesty into what they think you are trying to project. But how else is one meant to be? Do you become so shut down that you say nothing, that you have no opinions?''

As for the fact that she is now recognized on the street, and that her sartorial choices are followed avidly by fashion pundits, she said: ''It's been quite strange, but it seems to be part of the deal. And people think my life has changed more than it actually has.''

Ms. Driver is now back in Britain making ''An Ideal Husband,'' a film adaptation of the Oscar Wilde play which is being directed by Oliver Parker and also stars Julianne Moore, Rupert Everett and Cate Blanchett. ''I get to be frothy and vicious and souffle-like,'' Ms. Driver said with a smile.

The first Two Drivers film, a philosophical comedy called ''At Sachem Farm,'' finished shooting in California in March. Directed by John Huddles, it stars a British trio: Ms. Driver, Rufus Sewell and Nigel Hawthorne. ''There is something about Minnie that makes me think of Katharine Hepburn -- slightly imperious, with that wonderful naughty smile,'' said Mr. Hawthorne, who plays an eccentric uncle to Mr. Sewell's character in the film.

Ms. Driver is supposed to start filming the next Two Drivers project, a thriller called ''Slow Burn,'' this fall in the United States. Meanwhile, she is considering roles in studio movies as well. She tried the action genre with ''Hard Rain,'' a forgettable disaster film that opened earlier this year, and she balks at the proposition that large-budget films are somehow morally suspect.

''I'll go where the really good parts are,'' she said. ''It seems that more often than not in my career, they've been in the independent world. But I'll never say, 'I'll only do such and such.' I read something the other day which speculated about me: 'What's going to happen next? Is she going to sell out?' But can't you be as good in a $200 million movie as you would in a $2 million movie?''

Whatever the answer to that question may be, Ms. Driver will continue to be guided by her insistence that she feel something profound for the characters she plays.

''The other day, I turned something down, and they were all screaming at me and saying, 'It's a huge amount of money, this really amazing director, incredible actors, what are you doing?' '' she recalled. ''And I was saying: 'That isn't the point. I honestly don't think I will be very good in it. Anyone could do this, and that isn't a good reason to do something.' ''

She paused for a moment. ''You should feel secretly, 'Only I can do this.' ''

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A version of this article appears in print on August 2, 1998, on Page 2002009 of the National edition with the headline: FILM; When the Character Calls, Minnie Driver Listens. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe